It's Just a Wolf
by orchids117
Summary: PREQUEL. This is just a snippet of what's to come. For those of you who wanted a sequel to TARDIS Child, I have one in the works, and this will set up that story nicely. Reviews are very much welcomed. Enjoy!


**Let me know what you all think. The real story won't be out for a while, since I'm currently putting most of my focus on _One May Face a World of Demons_, but it's on its way!**

**Disclaimer: All rights belong to the BBC**

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**Wolf.**

Keeping track of my own age had always been a struggle for me. And what was age anyway but one person's viewpoint along their own timeline? A way for them to count the days until that last, inevitable day came. The day they die.

Some days I really wished it was that simple. That death really was only one moment in which a person ceased to exist. One moment they would be there, and then they were gone. And that one moment was so small, in the scheme of it all, so small compared to all the other moments surrounding them. They were all so oblivious to the web that was always growing and changing and morphing with each one of their little moments. And, in truth, they never died. Not really.

Some days I envied them their oblivious nature. A nature I had at one time, long ago.

It was in these moments that I remembered something my mum had told me once. How one day I wouldn't be Rose Tyler anymore, how I wouldn't even be _human_ anymore. How one day I would be walking in some strange alien marketplace, only to realize I didn't know who or what I was anymore. How I would lose myself in this life I had chosen.

Who knew she would ever be right?

It felt as though I had always been this. A drifter, a wanderer. Never stopping, never resting, never staying anywhere long enough to call it home. Everything was a continuous search, every stop a single stone on my way to my ultimate goal-to find my little girl.

It had been years since I had seen them all.

That wasn't true, of course, I saw them all the time. Every time the vortex threw me out, every time I stopped to take just one moment to rest because I was too exhausted to continue. I saw them, and I saw what my absence did to them.

I knew where I would end up, I had always known and I had always been okay with my fate. I would be able to handle what happened to me, that wasn't the important part. Seeing one's own future came with what I was, that was my curse, really. The curse all of my kind had been forced to bear, the curse they had insured would never befall another race ever again. I had come to accept what I knew, and I had made my peace with it.

The important part was what would happen to them.

I watched, with every stop I made and with every conversation I allowed myself to have with them I watched them fall apart. I watched as they searched for me, I watched as they found me, and I watched as they lost me again. I saw the heartbreak of it all, I saw the denial and the anger. I watched as one by one they went their separate ways until he was alone again.

I remembered that night. It had been during my search for Mara, I had stopped to rest and he was there, but it wasn't _him_. It was one version that I had only come to know much later. Long after he had changed, long after he had found new companions. I had stopped and he had cared for me, tenderly washing away my wounds when I was too tired to do so myself. He had told me I was angry with him, that he had done something awful, that he had lied to me.

I knew now what he meant.

I could hear him, shouting at me throughout time and space, calling to me so I would find him again. I heard the words, I heard it when he found me.

_No more._ His whisper broke through all the others, and I watched as he found me, forgotten in a vault full of the dangerous and the forbidden. I guess I could believe that I belonged here, hidden away by the people who feared me most, only to be found again by him.

It was ironic, really, they always tried to split us up but they never could. Not for long, at least.

I watched as he carried me. He landed his TARDIS on some remote planet whose name I had long since forgotten and he carried me far away. The TARDIS had known it was me, I had felt her sad hum in the back of my mind. It did not surprise me that she knew me already, we were sisters, after all. One and the same being.

He set me down in a small shed with a dirt floor, and I felt the immediate release when his mind unconsciously allowed me to come forth.

_No more._ The shouts were far more uniform now, the moment was coming.

I watched him run to the door, and felt a sadness creeping around in my heart. He looked so sad, my Doctor, and so weary from the war. The words were seared onto his hearts, the screams of his people echoing in his head. I could feel his grief, through our bond, his anger and despair. He needed me, my Doctor.

"Hello? Is somebody there?" He looked out of the barn, out over the never ending desert he had chosen for this meeting. This first meeting with me he would never remember, not until it was far too late.

Far away, I watched as he looked up at the sky, holding my hand and pointing at stars. I watched us run, I watched myself change. I watched as my children grew, and I watched as they died. And everywhere, every when, I saw him.

"It's nothing." I told him, a slight smile on my face.

"It's just a wolf."


End file.
